Vices
by vaudevillain king
Summary: We all have our weaknesses, deception and lies. Wilsoncentric. Oneshot.


My first attempt at House fanfiction.

It started out as a character study of House... and ended up being some freakishly angsty crackfic for HouseWilson.

This is one of the few fandoms I'm a part of where I support pretty much every pairing there is... I'd say there's a part (read "sentence") in this fic that suggests (if you stand on your head and squint, that is) HouseCameron, HouseChase, Huddy...

HouseStacy is just too much angst-filled canon for my tastes, though. The show itself sorta milked that dry.

**Disclaimer:** House is not mine, nor are the amazing characters that are part of it. I guess that's a good thing, since the show wouldn't be nearly as good if I were running it.

Onward!

* * *

It was an almost endless downward spiral. 

You watch him every day, and no matter what, you find yourself wondering at just how he manages to be _him_.

He's always scruffy, unshaven and limping around in his worn sneakers and jeans, but his eyes are startlingly blue and piercing; they give away the sharp intelligence that becomes apparent when he works, or when he does nothing more than _speak_.

They also give away that bitter taste of misery he can't ever seem to shake.

Complete strangers look upon him with pity that they think he doesn't see. It's a pity that lasts only until he opens his mouth and tells them just what he thinks of them, their opinions, their intelligence, and perhaps what their mothers were doing the night before.

He'll make you cower without ever raising his voice, make you bite your tongue and hold back all the screams and tears he seems to so unconsciously dredge up from your insides. His words bite, they twist and turn and if you aren't careful, they'll cut you up until you're nothing but a bleeding, hateful mess of raw nerve endings with a bad limp in your right leg.

James Wilson liked to think that he was above those razorblade sentences, liked to think that he understood House completely. But at the end of all things, he was falling down the spiral, and if it wasn't him that House left to pick up the pieces, it was Chase, or Cameron, or Cuddy, if she had to. Once it could have been Stacy, but Stacy left.

She'd just been cut one too many times.

James, made used to the scouring of such lacerations, understood why he was usually the one to call House first on those bad days when he didn't come in to work on time... That was, when "on time" meant later than the time of day that House normally _felt_ like he should show up, which was, of course, never when Cuddy told him to.

Wilson understood why it was that he was the one to come by in the morning and scoop House up off the floor, or sometimes his piano bench; he knew why he was the one to hand Greg his cane so he could limp down to the bathroom to play vomitorium with the previous night's booze and Vicodin and slurred remarks of how "everybody fucking _lies"._

Wilson liked to think that he understood everything about House.

All he really understood was the pain.

He knew it like he knew his own face in the mirror, or like the back of his own hand.

He knew it like the cold, empty side of his bed sometimes.

He knew it like the thousands of memories of other women under him, like he knew the angry words exchanged when such memories were discovered.

He understood House as he understood every bitter, fragile stack of words and actions and gestures used in an attempt to fix what had been long since broken.

James Wilson understood House's pain, because he'd seen that pain in the eyes of every woman whose heart he'd ever broken. He saw it in his own eyes every morning when he remembered that some very small, sadistic, and very _House-like_ part of him enjoyed seeing those looks they gave him.

It was an addiction.

Like painkillers and pianists, like cheap women and sometimes men; like two or three different wedding albums whose photographed faces always ended up ugly, broken and burned by divorce settlements and tears. James Wilson knew pain as he knew love- as something fragile and easily taken away, be it by a bottleful of Vicodin or a vicious, stolen kiss from your best friend.

No matter how many women there were, love affairs and shattered wives who always attempted to take half of what he owned eventually, James Wilson's somewhat broken axis always came back to revolving around Dr. Gregory House.

He fretted and scolded and tried to hold up to those biting, broken razors that laced House's every word, because in the endless downward spiral of this little world of theirs, _he needed it._ He needed it like he needed to fall in love and back out again in seconds, like he needed the tears, the sex, and the countless dollars spent on divorce lawyers and wedding rings.

He wanted it, too, like the harsh rub of a stubble-ridden jaw against his cheek, like fingers tangled painfully in his hair and rough sex at odd angles to keep the weight off the constant pain of an old scar. He wanted it like he wanted to be told he was loved even when he knew it wasn't true; to be told that he was wanted even when he knew it couldn't ever be.

James Wilson's vice, his expertise, was cheating. Gregory House's lay in lies.

And together, perhaps, as House had once said, they could rule the world.

* * *

Hope you liked it! 

I don't quite recall what episode it was where House told Wilson they could rule the world with their combined ridiculousness.

Yeah, you go ahead and bow before the crazy. And while you're at it- **review!**

-Ashley


End file.
